4″ Heeled Nerves

What happens when the future feels so anxiously palpable that the day that you’re living in feels insignificant?

When there’s such huge decisions and the thought of being a poor, working, over-educated member of society makes you want to crawl back into a hole and either go back to school or get knocked up…jk

I don't want babies..not yet anyways...even though Miz said that I'd be good a Mamahood..I looked at that FB comment and nervous laughed...not ready.

I digress.

The point is that for some of us, the anxiety about not having life in perfect little boxes is worse than not having ketchup with a hotdog at the country fair. Or tequila with mexican food. Or a beer at a footy game

(footy is Australian rules football, you don't need to really understand anything about the game, except that the men are beautiful specimens of testosterone)

It’s this honestly palpable energy in your body that makes you feel like you’re wasting your days worrying about tomorrow’s, next month’s or next year’s days. And it’s damn hard to work around. For me the first thing that I go to is trying to control my food intake. I go straight back to the days of dieting. I’m not against dieting, or really most things in life, as long as they’re done in moderation and done for the right reasons.

(unless of course it's a 'free kick' with a hot man or woman and then nothing should be done in moderation..except actually making babies...but practising..knock yourself out)

But the point I’m trying to make is that something happened to me last night. I wanted to desperately control my weight. It’s f-ed up. I’m nervous, so I then click into a perfectionist mode about my weight. I NEED TO LOSE WEIGHT..then I over-eat because the impeding attack of perfectionism is so much, that I just need chocolate cake to momentarily distract me from the insane amounts of pressure that I put on myself.

But what happens if you throw a cute distraction into your life? Do you add them as yet another notch on your bedpost of anxiety

(just anxiety, what kinda person do you think I am?)

At the end of the day you have to really ask yourself what type of person you want to be. Not what someone else wants you to be..or in so many instances..what we think someone else wants us to be without us ever asking them to validate our created sentiments of their sentiments.

So go out and define this day for you..that’s what I’m gonna do. It probably means that I’m going to rock some 4″ heels..just so I can walk down the street and make toothless bricklayer gawk..knowing full well that I don’t need to do anything else except exude what I inherently have.

WaRm-th

defined:

Enthusiasm, affection, or kindness

pronounced:

noun /wôrmTH/

what does it mean?

for me warmth is where I find my balance. when the critical monster pops back up..I bring myself back to warmth. to the place where I don’t criticise myself to the core. where I eat, interact, workout, sleep, complain, praise, love, and live with the core focus of warmth. where I take a step back and ask myself “is this from a place of warmth”. where obligation and exhaustion and critique are replaced by the underlying condition of showing myself and others warmth.

how do you find it?

i’m not too sure, but for me it’s stopping the voice in my head from chattering away. it’s stopping the mental games I can play with myself and listening to my heart-space. I don’t know if I have any other better way. it’s the place where you can go that stops the anxiety that is easily brewed for some of us in our daily lives due to over-thinking, future plans we can’t control and the idea that something is going to fail.

what does it feel like?

peace.calm.direction.bliss.pure.modest.honest.centered

Discovering Your Sweet Spot

I had such a fabulous weekend. It was full of watching the calm waves crash against the shore, whilst shoving a delicious burger in my face. Realising that each and every sunset is unique.

I’m someone who is an overachiever. I blame it on being American, surrounded by a hard-working farming family, and my own innate insecurities and drive. It’s something that has lessened since the day I left for Australia over five years ago.

I’ve been chasing for the past three years THE PLACE, where the penny would drop and it’d be happy. I’ve chased through dieting. Through exercise. Through men. Through sex. Through really good grades. Through trying to make everyone like me.Through sacrificing.

Instead I think that ‘the place’, or what I’d like to call the sweet spot, actually lives somewhere in the depths of your heart. Oftentimes we silence this place through the headspace that we think we must live in. The headspace that counts calories and depends upon them for a good day. The headspace that panics when texting from the one you adore doesn’t happen. The headspace that tells you that you’re never gonna be anything other than the f-ed up person that you have been or currently are.

So I took a breath. I asked SuperDot, my saving grace, what I should work on for the next four weeks….her response “warmth”.

Warmth for me is relying less upon my headspace and more on my heart space. my sweet spot.

Maybe it’s playing bananagrams.

Maybe it’s drinking a really expensive bottle of wine with friends.

Maybe it’s reading blogs, from lovelies like Susan.

I could have spent my whole life travelling from city to city, looking for something I was never going to find. When in reality, it’s been next to me the whole time. It’s not always about searching for happiness, but rather being still enough to let it come find you. Because when you wipe away the things that worry and scare you, you will sometimes find the beauty in the world you never knew existed.

Maybe it’s cuddling with a puppy.

Maybe it’s putting make-up on and hittin’ the town.

Maybe it’s having a swanky coffee date for one.

Maybe it’s cooking bread.

Maybe it’s writing your thoughts out, whilst you drip with tears because you realised that you’re living in the deepest place of warmth you’ve been in…the place you would have done anything to be in.

for the first time in the longest time..you let yourself melt and stay in the moment..where you to realise that it’s ok to succumb.

What is becoming more and more apparent, is that it’s about discovering your own sweet spot, because you’ll get the life you’ve always wanted.

~Mish

Bed Head Thoughts

Sometimes there’s little moments in my life when I realise that the self-care/love is slipping away. Perhaps it’s sparked by an unexpected phone call from someone who you’d really rather not speak to. Or sleepless nights. Or being single. Or missing your family. Or maybe just because you realise that you’re able to tap into the fact that you’re not taking care of yourself.

When you’re checking your e-mail, facebook, people.com 50x a day to see if anything outside of yourself has changed to involve some sort of beautiful spark that a fantasy world outside of yourself is more exciting that the neglected place you may find yourself momentarily in.

It can be masked by long coffee chats, e-mails and facebook stalking. It can be drowned in ice cream and tequila. But the reality is that self-care doesn’t exist truthfully in any of those things.

When I put my eye mask pillow on tonight, for the first time I had actually taken myself away from the computer and distractable phase I’ve been in this whole weekend.

Distract me…please.

I laid in my bed thinking about how Katie described sex sometimes with her man as one where she can be so raw and open and in the moment and loving that she cries with the pure satisfaction of being wrapped up so in the moment that it’s intoxicating. I was so overwhelmed with that thought of being able to physically be with someone so emotionally that you felt such an intense freedom that you cried and didn’t feel like hiding from it.

Then I realised that that’s how we should feel about ourselves.

That everyday there’s an ability to find a way to ‘make love’ (not that way!) to ourselves that we are so entrapped in nurturing ourselves that we can find peace, solace, and unconditional love in a moment of introspection or adoration that even in the rawest of form we are appreciated.

I can say, that I don’t think that I could be as intimately open as Katie right now…because I haven’t got my head around that level of beauty for myself, or myself yet.

What I do believe, truthfully, that most of humanity aches for more than a skinny ass, svelte figures, ripped muscles, and money. Really, it is to be rawly beautiful to themselves, with themselves…and for that self to be respected and cherished by those around them. And yet, until we grasp that fundamental concept, the distractibility of life is profound.

I don’t know what that means..but thank you Katie. I’ve got something to go to bed with tonight.

Space

I don’t think that I realised how much I need, desire, crave, want, devour….space. My own space. My own time, when I put the dishes away, if I walk around in a towel, when I let the dog crawl into my lap.

I moved back into my home, the home where I’m ‘mom’ for 20 study abroad students for 4.5 months, twice per year. Where my space revolves around a bedroom and a living room. It’s my hiding out spot. It’s the only place I can quasi-carve out my own routine..kinda.

I didn’t realise how much this place…both physically and mentally…attacks me. It’s strewn with memories of the past, as I have come back to do this job after a 2 year break. It’s a constant reminder of my past days of intense dieting and trying to find my way. When I was house/dog sitting I didn’t have these intense sleepless nights and negative thoughts spiraling around in my head. I don’t know if it’s a combination of a lot of things, but it’s present.

Maybe it’s because the ‘ex’ texted today after a year hiatus of no communication to say he’s in town. To see if I wanted to meet up.

It’s been 2.5 years since we’ve broken up. I don’t know if some people wrap onto in certain ways. Ways in which you want to hug them, suss out if there’s any chance of something…while simultansouly kicking them in the balls and puking. Maybe it’s heightened by the grossly simple fact that after seven months of slogging it through in the online dating scene I couldn’t stitch together a man to save my life.

“Thanks but no thanks” is the running ticker on my news board.

Maybe it’s because people are shocked when they hear that I have only had one partner and/or that I’ve been single for so long.

“How could someone like YOU be single. You’re such a good catch!” —> fuck if I know…wanna shed some light on it?

In the midst of it all, it is when the creepyily efficient negative thinking patterns creep in. The body image takes a nose dive and I feel like I am trapped between a triathlon training schedule, doing yoga, and trying to not shove my face with homemade frosting. It seems that not matter which turn I choose, I feel stuck between trying to commit to something that will ‘make me better’ and ‘live up to my full potential’.

It’s a sick twisted place and it is sparked, which I am realising, from a deep need for space. I never really realised how much of my life I give..of myself..to others..all the time.

So I endeavour to make this semester one where I find my space. Not my ‘gotta get thin, run a race, have  a bf’ kinda space. Just my own beautiful, tranquil, awesome space. Space where I invite people.

Mish

Do You Love Food?

I would be a self-professed ‘foodie’. You know the ones that spend minutes waiting for something to cool down. Taking the cutting board into the window to chop up the veggies, take a photo, then run back to saute them.

Sit painstakingly angling the camera so that you can make the  bit of chocolate the most authentic.

It is fun.

But do you actually LOVE food?

Why am I even asking that question? Because I think there’s a different between the statements: “I LOVE food.” and “I am in LOVE with food.” I would always say that I LOVED food. I loved eating it, baking/cooking it, giving it to other people..and for most of the time that is true. But more though, it was what food DID for me. It soothed me, distracted me, got me skinny, left me with a lot of obsession, and for much of my life was the bane if my existence. But I loved it…it was always an escape for me.

there’s nothing like realizing you don’t like the food you’ve been bingeing for thirty years. ~Geneen Roth

I’m not saying that all of the food I’ve made has now been out of spite and that I loathe everything that I’ve eaten. But the number, oh the number of times I’d sit over a bowl of cookie dough, cake batter, pie crust, bread dough, spaghetti sauce, salsa, frosting…eating. Eating not because I ‘love food and couldn’t wait to share it with someone.’

I was eating because ‘I love the way the food, in that moment, medicated me’

I don’t really enjoy peanut butter dipped in brown sugar, or sneaking bowls of ice cream laden with syrup and cookie crumbs topped with peanut butter….or spoonfuls of hot cocoa mix washed down with sugary Coke. The point, is that food…even though I do love food…was about the love of escape.

What I’m discovering is that it’s something much different. It’s actually about falling in love, being attentive to and nourishing your body through the admiration that food and your relationship with food can foster.

Realising that food is food, it’s beautifully and complexly simple. It needn’t be anything other than a relationship of sustaining your inner fire. Fall in love with you, fall in love with food. No longer does food have to be about how it makes life tolerable, a psuedo-love…rather it adds to the love you already have for yourself.

I’m starting to fall in love with food, because I see the beauty in nurturing myself.

~Mish

Why Are You Holding On?

The book “Women, Food and God” by Geneen Roth is one of those books that I could simply pick-up at any time, flip to any page, and be fed (no pun intended). It’s just powerful. Incredibly true. I feel like my head is in a constant nod of agreeance of ‘that’s exactly how I feel’.

It’s powerful stuff.

It was sitting on my floor and I picked it up and flipped to a page. Page 190-191.

When you edge a cake, when you cut tiny little pieces off the sides every time you walk by and you walk by a dozen times during a day, and you tell yourself that these tiny slices don’t really add up to one whole piece of cake, you are lying to yourself.

Oh.my.god….how many times have I done that? How many times do I hover, live in the kitchen, find excuses to ‘taste it just one more time’. Or sneak/shove a piece in my mouth when ‘no one is looking’.

You want the cake but you don’t want to want the cake, so you’re figuring out how to get it without admitting to yourself that you’re eating it.

Yep.

Then she goes onto something that I think we all, those of us who struggle with the ‘last 30lbs/15kg/5lbs/100lbs’ have to actually admit to.

When you say you want to lose weight but you consistently eat past satisfied, and when you say you don’t know what being satisfied feels like, you are not telling yourself the truth.

I think for so long we either live in a mentally deprived state of dieting–obsessing about food. Or we live in a binge-laden state where we are so consistently full that we eat out of time/place/occasion rather than genuine interest in the resolve to honour our bodies.

But why? Why would I, you, me, us put ourselves through this. It’s either mental gymnastics or complete disregard for how we are actually feeling?

So when you ignore what could help you stop eating emotionally, you have to ask yourself if you really want to stop.

I’m.not.even.kidding…when I say that sentence stuck out of the book like a smack.bang.boom throw it in your face…but why michelle? Why are you hanging onto food?

I’m not sure I can answer the question, right now, in this post. I will sort it out this week. I have mulling thoughts in my head and instead of being pissed off about them, I’m actually really wanting to face them head on. The nitty, gritty, ugly, attachments of a girl who still has tentacles wrapped around food which I know are holding me back.

So, why are you holding onto food?

~Mish